But as for solving actual problems? Wasn't terribly interested.

One thing people who study history give as the single most important lesson is that people who cling to the past are inevitably overrun by the present.

BTW, Reagan was not a transitional figure to Generation X. You can legitimately call him a transitional figure from the "Greatest Generation" to the Baby Boomers, but Generation X was not old enough to vote for him in 1984.

It was a horrible mistake for him to announce his desire for a Justice of Empathy, a line of determination he should have known would have provided a rhetorical opening for the enemy.

This is the logic of appeasement.

Obama delivered what his voters wanted him to deliver. This is what he promised during the campaign. The Republicans opposed him during the campaign, and they lost.

It is naive to think that if the Republicans were not (hypocritically I might add) attacking Obama for using the word "empathy", that there wouldn't be some other line of bs argument that they would use.

At some point, a leader has to stand up to the torrent of bs. Obama, to his credit, knows this. He picks his fights and has done a good job of winning them thus far.

Once Sotomayor is confirmed (and I have little doubt that will happen), we'll see whether the phrase "Obama's fault" is appropriate.

That's what they do about everything. They have pat formulas for criticizing people and don't care whether or not they are true. They just want to find out if they can be sold to the public.

These are, after all, the people who sold the media on the notion that machine recounts were more accurate than recounts by hand. And on the myth of WMDs and the Iraq-Al Qaeda connection.

So - habeas corpus is a bad idea?

One of the reasons that due process is required for people detained by the state is that only through due process does the state know that the people accused are actually guilty of anything.

When the state is reduced to saying "we know these people are bad, so we must keep them in prison, even though we cannot prove they have done anything wrong", the state has stooped to the level of a medieval fiefdom, where detention is based solely on the identity of the people in power, and not on the rule of law.

To put this more succintly: there is now no difference between Obama's policy with regard to indefinite detention and the policy of PW Botha in South Africa.

When there's no good reason to oppose closing Gitmo, you know that the right wing has to come up with a bad reason.

The weird thing is how widely disseminated the bad idea becomes. And it's not like anybody in the wider world buys into the bad idea. It's just that nincompoops like Harry Reid think that they do. Or, even worse, they think that there might be people who feel that way, and feel that there is no downside to playing along with the fear-mongering.

But for the country at large, the downside of the fear-mongering is tremendous. Our economic difficulties are directly tied into our Bushian military spending.

the Democratic caucus should stop electing majority leaders from such borderline states?

First Daschle, and now Reid.

The Majority Leader should be selected from the center of the party, not from the rightmost extreme.

More columns from Chomsky. Fewer from the anonymous wingnut.

Or, better yet...you could have them engage in a debate!

I'll buy the popcorn.

What's amazing is that our anonymous clown manages to parrot the party line on every single issue! There is no sign of an independent mind here.

I think it's time for Salon to fess up and admit that you guys are running an AI impersonating a wingnut. I think the code is pretty easy

a) find out what the RNC says

b) repeat it!

I'm an American who has lived abroad in the UK and Germany. It's just a bold-faced lie to say that people there are dissatisfied with their health care systems. What one encounters far more often is a paternalistic dismay that the US runs such a poor system, which benefits so few people.

From an economic perspective, it's hard to see that we need a health insurance industry at all. Certainly we don't need a self-interested industry that simultaneously gouges prices for its consumers, while denying coverage to those who really need help, and regularly stiffing the doctors who provide care, all the while imposing its philosophy that every patient should be treated like the mean average patient.

Salon is not doing us any favors by giving a platform for an anonymous fool to repeat the urban myths of the RNC Illuminati. All Salon is managing to do here is allow anonymity to somebody who hardly deserves it.

It's not like the readers of Salon haven't already heard all of these arguments.